OPINION: 2022’s health budget decisions in review

Posted in: COVID-19, Healthcare system, HIV/AIDS, Latest, TB

Health budgets have the power to advance access to healthcare for millions of people in South Africa. This year, however, as the health sector and the economy recovered from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a volatile global environment, the South African government missed opportunities to provide the financial resources to protect access to healthcare for the most vulnerable. Matshidiso Lencoasa unpacks how the past year’s budget choices will affect key public health services.

OPINION: 2022’s health budget decisions in review

ANALYSIS: NHI Bill – clause-by-clause headbutting begins in Parliament

Posted in: Healthcare system, Latest, NHI, Sections

In what is expected to become a verbal minefield littered with the usual ideological quips, the members of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health this week started the clause-by-clause deliberations on the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill. Alicestine October assesses the first leg of the deliberations and issues set to pop up in the next round of deliberations, starting with clause 5 of the Bill next week.

ANALYSIS: NHI Bill – clause-by-clause headbutting begins in Parliament

Opinion: Reframing the right to healthcare in terms of insurance cover is a bad idea

Posted in: Healthcare system, Latest, NHI, Spotlight on NHI

Framing the fundamental human right to healthcare as insurance cover opens it up for exploitation. It blocks any possibility of achieving equity in health care. Here Dr Louis Reynolds from the People’s Health Movement of South Africa explains why and how.

Opinion: Reframing the right to healthcare in terms of insurance cover is a bad idea

Opinion: SA’s TB recovery doesn’t necessarily need a bigger budget, just reprioritisation

Posted in: Spotlight

Since the COVID-19 pandemic has stymied the progress of the tuberculosis response across the world, the call for increased investment is important. Although health programmes can always do with more financial assistance, in South Africa, for its TB Recovery Plan to work, the focus should be on the strategic use of existing resources, argues Russell Rensburg.

Opinion: SA’s TB recovery doesn’t necessarily need a bigger budget, just reprioritisation

Opinion: It is time to invest in ending TB in SA

Posted in: Edition 10: Drug-resistant TB, Healthcare system, Latest, TB, TB

Investing in tuberculosis means that everyone has a stake in eliminating TB as a public health threat in our country: every person, every family, every community, every organisation (public and private) as well as government, writes Dr Yogan Pillay and Gaurang Tanna.

Opinion: It is time to invest in ending TB in SA

Opinion: Health needed a recovery budget, we got the opposite

Posted in: Healthcare system, Latest

For healthcare, a post-pandemic human rights-focused budget would have allocated funding specifically for backlogs in access to health services from the past two years, as well as tackling the present inequities in access to healthcare that characterise the public health system. Tshidi Lencoasa, Khanyisa Mapipa, and Julia Chaskalson argue that this year’s budget does not do enough to enable government to realise people’s fundamental human right to access healthcare.

Opinion: Health needed a recovery budget, we got the opposite

In-depth on NHI: Common themes emerging from parliamentary hearings (PART 1)

Posted in: Healthcare system, Latest, Spotlight on NHI

On Wednesday this week, it will be the 25th day of public hearings in Parliament on the National Health Insurance Bill since the hearings started in May last year. In Part 1 of this two-part series on the NHI Bill, Alicestine October looks at how MPs have dealt with oral submissions on the Bill in Parliament so far and assesses what this means for the Bill going forward.

In-depth on NHI: Common themes emerging from parliamentary hearings (PART 1)

In-depth: This is how health departments (mis)spend public funds

Posted in: Latest

The recently released audit outcomes for the 2019/2020 financial year paints a grim picture of wastage and mismanagement of public funds in provincial health departments. Spotlight Deputy Editor Alicestine October unpacks and examines the Auditor General’s findings.